displace/graft/retrace

Artworks / Framed works / 17 artworks / 1 artist / 3 crates / 70 running feet

AVAILABLE September 2008 to August 2009

Curated by Todd Schaber

To many of us being born in a country where freedom and stability are taken for granted, forced displacement is seldom given a passing thought, other than the feeling of fleeting sympathy for those in war torn countries seen on television for the moment. For Catherine Hamel, growing up in Beirut during the sixteen-year civil war displacement became a reality.

Catherine Hamel was born in Beirut, Lebanon, her father Dutch and mother Greek and Lebanese. They stayed in Lebanon for the first ten years of her life, then moved to Egypt, where her mother grew up, back to Beirut, then on to the United Arab Emirates. At age 17, she moved to the United States where she received her Bachelor of Science in Interior Design in 1985. She then went on to complete her Bachelor of Architecture from the Pennsylvania State University and in 1993, she completed her Masters of Architecture from McGill University School of Architecture, Montreal.

Currently, Catherine Hamel is an Associate Professor of Architecture, Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary. As a professor, Hamel teaches architectural design and advanced architectural drawing. Her art medium is primarily ink and ink wash. The drawings are used as inspiration for her writing which investigates issues of identity and estrangement in post-war landscapes. Catherine Hamel has experienced the theatre of destruction and desolation inflicted to both property and people first-hand while growing up during the civil war in Beirut. This exhibition extends an insight into these issues from a personal perspective.

Catherine Hamel "Beirut Landscape #2" Courtesy of the artist.